Where Music Comes to Play

Artist creates in-mouth MP3 player

We don’t see a lot of innovation in the MP3 player world these days, and I’m quite frankly not sure if this really is innovation or if “insanity” is a better word for it. Aisen Chacin from Parsons The New School for Design in New York made a mold of her own mouth, integrated a small MP3 player (a generic one from the looks of it), connected a small vibrating motor to the headphone port, and topped it off with a mouth jewelry piece called a “grill”. The resulting contraption is tongue-controlled, inserts into the mouth, and plays music through vibrations in the skull. The name of the contraption? Play-A-Grill.

Again, I’m not sure what to think of this. On the one hand, it’s certainly innovative, and you gotta love the DIY nature of it. On the other hand…it’s an MP3 player for your mouth. I know I’ve been into wireless headphones in the past, but somehow this idea never struck me. I’m certain that it would have its uses, and if ever made into a commercial product it could maybe even be shrunk down enough to where it’s less of a lump in your mouth, but I have to wonder about the sound quality coming out of this. Either way though, it’s cool, in its own quirky way.

I don’t think you two are approaching the “Play-A-Grill” with the right mindset: It’s not a product, but an art object. The concept at play is just as critical to the piece as the (admittedly crude) device itself. As a kind of kinetic jewelry (“jewelry” is the word the artist uses to identify it), this thing isn’t built with “innovation,” marketability, or store shelves in mind.

In her artist statement, Aisen writes: “Play-A-Grill is the combination of a digital music player and the mouth piece jewelry usually associated with Hip Hop and Rap music genres known as a grill…This piece of jewelry presents a perfect opportunity to merge an arbitrary music fashion object and reintroduce it as the music player itself…Play-A-Grill is an iteration of a music fashion object of that becomes the music player itself.”

OK boys and girls, FIRST – Unless YOU are out there coming up with ANY new idea for ANY product, stop judging those that are. it’s disheartening to see that the only comments people can add are disparaging ones.
SECOND – Given that the environment in which this thing is intended to be used is both acidic AND perpetually moist (Unless you are Wiz Kalifa – then your mouth tends to be DRY most of the time – wink wink), I don’t see how it will ever be practical. you would need the device to have a water-tight seal all around (even the buttons). Possibly flexible, disposable ‘skins’ (mp3 condoms?) you could use to cover the device before putting it in? We will leave THAT one to R&D.
THIRD – looking at the placement of the buttons, you’d have to use your tongue to control it. ‘CRANK IT UP’ looks easy enough, but you’d darn-near choke on your own tongue trying to turn it down.

Overcome those obstacles and you have a big hit on your hands. I predict these will be seen in stores before Christmas 2012.

I wonder what it sounds like, to hear music in that way. There were those toothbrush things a few years back with pop songs – I should have bought one just to satisfy my curiosity. Other than that, there’s only those expensive underwater devices.

Lol, the future of listening to music discreetly! Have to give points for creativity though, as odd/unsanitary as the device itself seems. I’m mainly curious about how that actually sounds though, something tells me it would give you a headache or something.

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